1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (210 page)

Signage welcomes patrons to Spice Market in London.

When we think about fried rice, we typically summon up images of the Chinese standard, the satisfying accompaniment to many Cantonese dishes that is also a smart way to use up leftover bits of meat and vegetables. But that
humble dish came in for a transcendent transformation at the hands of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the French-Alsatian chef who worked in Thailand and developed a taste for Asian ingredients, eventually melding them with his suave French technique at his restaurants in New York and Las Vegas. Those who love Thai flavors will get particular joy from the ginger fried rice served at his Spice Market restaurants, one of the most delectable results of Vongerichten’s particular brand of fusion.

He begins with flower-scented jasmine rice that is cooked and chilled the day before it is to be fried and served. The rice is quickly stir-fried with leeks in clarified chicken fat; for vegetarians or those without clarified chicken fat on hand, the chef recommends peanut oil as a fair if less flavorful substitute. Either way, the result is an irresistibly crunchy, mellow-yet-flavorful mound of rice, which is then encrusted with golden crumbles of fried minced ginger and garlic. The dish is topped off with a fried egg, the runny yolk of which serves as a supple sauce for the rice.

Although ginger fried rice is listed as a side dish on Vongerichten’s Spice Market menus in New York, London, and Doha, Qatar (as well as at Perry Street in New York, where his son, Cedric, is chef), it tends to steal the spotlight. In fact, a bowl of this rice with the almost equally delicious green papaya salad or a portion of peanut-and-chile-sauced chicken satay makes for a lovely and complete Thai lunch.

Where:
Spice Market, 403 W. 14th St., New York, tel 212-675-2322,
spicemarketnewyork.com
; Leicester Square, 10 Wardour St., London, tel 44/20-7758-1088,
spicemarketlondon.co.uk
; W Hotel & Residences, West Bay Lagoon, Doha, Qatar, tel 974/44-535-000,
spicemarketdoha.com
.
In New York
, Perry Street, tel 212-352-1900,
perrystrestaurant.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges
by Jean-Georges Vongerichten (2007);
food52.com
(search jean-georges ginger fried rice).

Spices for yellow, red, and green curries, from mild to hot.

Curry in Thailand is called
kaeng
, and it may be yellow, red, or green, which can be read as “hot,” “hotter,” and “Hurry! Pass the rice!” Anyone gasping after a mouthful of what are surely the world’s most incendiary but deliciously rewarding curries is ill advised to seek relief from a beverage, hot or cold. Liquids only spread the spice-carrying oils over the surface of the tongue, when what you want is the mopping-up action of plain rice. Thus forewarned, you can begin to explore the various kaengs of Thailand, all thinner and soupier than their saucier Indian relatives and quite spicy-hot, even at their mildest.

Yellow curries (
kaeng kari
) are a good starting point for novices, as they are the least palate-singeing of the bunch. Like all Thai curries, they have a base of coconut milk with a paste of
toasted and powdered spices, which in this case includes turmeric (for the yellow hue), star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves, crushed dried chiles, fermented shrimp paste, ginger, coriander seeds, and cumin. They may be bolstered with beef, lamb, or chicken chunks and usually also include onions, potatoes, and pineapple chunks.

Blushing from liberal doses of red chile powder, red curries (
kaeng phet
) are made with white pepper, cumin, coriander seeds, nutmeg, cilantro roots, garlic, lemongrass, the grated rind of fragrant kaffir limes, and ginger or, preferably, the more potent Southeast Asian rhizome galangal. They also have coconut milk, of course, for a sauce well suited to roasted pork, duck, beef, shrimp, or eel. Bamboo shoots, sweet Thai basil, and pumpkin are sometimes tossed in as well.

Green curries (
kaeng keow wan
) get their color, and their heat, from plenty of deceptively sweet-looking hot green chiles, seeds and all. The spice paste is made by grinding together lemongrass, shallots, ginger, coriander (seeds and roots), cumin, white pepper, and kaffir lime zest, along with palm sugar, garlic, and holy basil, a powerfully flavored herb that is a particular favorite in Thailand. The paste is cooked in coconut milk, and beef or chicken and quartered small, round Thai eggplants are the standard additions to this hottest of hot curries.

A great favorite in Thailand, massaman curry (
kaeng musmun
) is one that is not designated by color. It is more Indian in style and is actually a legacy of Muslim spice traders, hence its name, which probably evolved from Arabic. Certainly it contains plenty of the spice trader’s wares: cumin, caraway, cinnamon, cloves, star anise, cardamom, nutmeg, white pepper, and ginger. It also has cashews, limes, garlic, lemongrass, and tiny, super-hot red bird’s-eye chiles. Although it is spicy, the overall effect is more aromatic than fiery, balanced by the tart juice of tamarind or bitter oranges (such as Sevilles or calamondins, small fruits similar to tangerines), as well as chunks of potato, pineapple, and chicken or beef. It is rarely made with pork, likely due to the dish’s Muslim roots. Massaman curry is typically served with sweet-tart pickled ginger or
achat
, a pickled cucumber relish, and, as with all Thai curries, bowls of steamed white rice—either fluffy, flowery jasmine, or the delightfully dense and chewy sticky rice.

Where:
In New York
, Jaiya at two locations,
jaiya.com
;
in Brookline, MA
, Dok Bua Thai Kitchen, tel 617-232-2955,
dokbua-thai.com
;
in Boston
, Brown Sugar Cafe, tel 617-787-4242,
brownsugarcafe.com
;
in Chicago
, Amarit Thai & Pan Asian Cuisine, tel 312-939-1179;
in New Orleans
, La Thai Uptown, tel 504-899-8886,
lathaiuptown.com
;
in Las Vegas
, Lotus of Siam, tel 702-735-3033,
saipinchutima.com
;
in Los Angeles
, Night+Market at two locations,
nightmarketla.com
; Jitlada Restaurant, tel 323-667-9809,
jitladala.wordpress.com
.
Mail order:
For Thai ingredients, Thai Supermarket Online, tel 888-618-8424,
importfood.com
; Grocery Thai, tel 818-469-9407,
grocerythai.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Cracking the Coconut: Classic Thai Home Cooking
by Su-Mei Yu (2000);
Simple Thai Food
by Leela Punyaratabandhu (2014);
Everyday Thai Cooking
by Katie Chin (2013);
saveur.com
(search the star of siam);
seriouseats.com
(search kaeng kari kai).

A giant nut with roots in tropical Asia, the coconut was named by the sixteenth-century Portuguese explorers who saw
coco
faces—Portuguese for “monkey”—in the distinctive markings on the bottom of its thick husk. Ever since, its unique appearance and properties have been the object of fascination, both for humans and for the monkeys who love to climb the coconut palm.

Getting beyond the nut’s thick, hard husk and its woody nutshell to its creamy, rich, white meat takes some doing. A hammer or machete is the instrument of choice, and the difficulty is part of what makes the coconut legendary. Split open, the nut reveals flesh that lends itself to a dazzling array of uses: In shredded, chipped, chunked, or pureed form, fresh or more typically toasted or dried, it adds an addictive tropical flavor and a lusciously rich texture to recipes ranging from candy to curry and from layer cakes to smoothies. Inside the coconut, the meat encases the coconut “water”: a clear, slightly sweet, mineral-packed delight that has become a health trend for its high levels of rehydrating electrolytes.

Grated coconut adds sweetness and chewiness to some macaroons, and the Thai use its “milk” (the rich liquid squeezed from its grated, pressed meat) as a soothing, creamy ingredient in savory curries. Caribbean cooks include coconut cream or milk in succotash and soups. And where would the world’s beach bars be without the piña colada, that dangerously easy-to-drink concoction of coconut cream (coconut milk’s even richer twin) blended with pineapple juice and rum (see
listing
)?

Not to be overshadowed by its famous fruit, the coconut palm comes in handy in other ways. In some tropical cultures, its leaves are woven into baskets and roofs. Its trunk, as many a shipwreck fable has proven, can be hollowed out into a canoe, and the fibrous strings that entwine the coconut’s husk can be made into ropes. The coconut shell itself may be carved into utensils or split in half and used as a cup from which to drink unadulterated, deliciously fresh coconut water straight from the source, a treat hawked along Rio de Janeiro’s beaches.

Among its other attributes, the versatile fruit floats, and being carried away by ocean currents enabled it to propagate along the world’s coastlines. It grows twenty degrees north and south of the equator and can now be found from Hawaii south to Madagascar, and even inland in tropic zones of places like India. Worldwide demand for the coconut and its byproducts—including coconut oil, which is used in soaps, paints, baked goods, and homeopathic remedies—sustains major industries in the tropics, where workers climb to the tops of trees to remove the nuts. When fully mature, the coconut falls to the ground on its own,
depositing an excellent source of food and water right at a lucky eater’s feet. (Less-lucky passersby won’t get a meal out of the bargain: Dropping from heights of up to 80 feet, the nut is the suspected cause of about 150 deaths a year.)